The overall goals of the Vermont SCOR are to (1) improve the diagnosis and treatment of fibrotic lung disease, and (2) gain precise understanding of cell and tissue physiology as related to specified etiologic agents and the variability of host response. The program will utilize human specimens, animal models, and in vitro cell systems to investigate the responses of pulmonary defense mechanisms and component cell systems to the specific etiologic agents; kaolin, silica, acrolein, cytomegalovirus, and additional etiologies that present clinically. There will be studies of the physicochemical chracterization of the etiologic agent, deposition and clearance, biochemical, metabolic, and cyto-kinetic characteristics of cellular and secretory responses, the organization of such responses as tissue fibrosis, and the expression of such tissue processes as abnormal morphology, physiology and clinical facets of organ disease collectively known as pulmonary fibrosis.